What were your resolutions last year? Do you even remember them? I can tell you that last year I was pretty specific about my resolutions.
- Enjoy every minute of wedding planning.
- Become a morning person.
I didn’t reach too far, but I chose what I thought to be attainable goals. I succeeded with exactly 50% of my resolutions. I had a GREAT time planning my wedding. The thing about coming a morning person… Not even close.
I made a rookie mistake with my resolutions. I chose something that wasn’t a definable step. It was an end result and not the details of how to get there. This year I’m going to try again with the morning person thing, only I’m going to label it different. I can’t change a core component of who I am without giving some details of what being a “morning person” actually means.
I frequently see patients make a similar mistake by creating a goal of “becoming healthy.” What does “be healthy” mean to you? I want to challenge everyone to baby steps and to change our New Year Resolution into “6 monthly resolutions.” Or a 6 step program to completing your healthy resolutions.
So let me do this with you. I still want to “become a morning person” and I’ve decided to define this as someone that has no problems getting out of bed and enjoying the time spent getting ready for the day. So let’s give this a try…
- January: Drink 70 ounces of water each day.
- February: No Coffee or caffeine after 10:30am.
- March: Begin setting alarm 10 minutes earlier.
- April: Actually get up 10 minutes earlier.
- May: Do Yoga stretches for 10 minutes before leaving the house
- June: Put it all together. Tweak as needed.
As you can see, I’m giving myself a really good amount of time to reach for my healthy resolution and change how I function on a daily basis. Notice that I give myself and entire month to prepare to get out of bed just 10 minutes earlier… Ha!
What are your resolutions? Do you have something based in health? Do you want to get out of pain or start exercising more? Have you been meaning to try to lose weight? Or fill yourself with more self confidence? I suggest looking at the things in the past that have stopped you from getting there and begin to make changes in stages. So for example, if you want to start exercising more, what is usually stopping you? I hear a lot about Knee pain, or ankle pain or fatigue stopping people from exercising. We need to look at that as a separate and primary step in creating your New Years Resolution.
I have no doubt that your coming year is going to be amazing. Just let me know when and where I can help!
Be safe and as always, thank you for reading.
Dr Cate